Electric sanders, often referred to as sanding blocks or power sanders, are typically used when preparing surfaces for finishing or repairing furniture through abrasion. Typical sanders use abrasive paper, often referred to as sandpaper, to remove undesired surface material. In this regard, the typical sander couples to the sandpaper and moves the sandpaper across the surface in conjunction with a user manually moving the electric sander as well.
There a various types of electric sanders, including vibrating sanders. The vibrating sander usually comprises a flat plate to which the sandpaper is coupled via some type of latch or attachment mechanism. Once attached and the vibrating sander is operating, the vibrating sander moves the plate, thereby moving the sandpaper, in orbital motions, e.g., small circular motions, but not rotational. A user of the vibrating sander then manually moves the sander across the surface via a handle or grip, and the movement of the sandpaper via the plate coupled with movement induced by the user removes material from the surface that is being prepared.
FIG. 1 is an exemplary conventional sanding device 100 that sands even surfaces. The sanding device 100 comprises a motor housing 101 and a sandpaper plate 102. The sandpaper plate 102 is fitted with a piece of sand paper 103. The sandpaper plate 102 creates a flat surface for receiving the sand paper 103. Thus, as a user (not shown) is sanding, the sand paper 103 contacts a surface (not shown) of an object being sanded, and evenly sands the surface it contacts. If the object has an uneven surface with varying elevation anomalies, e.g., the surface has indentations, sporadically placed concavities, depressions, protrusions, bulges, bumps convexities, or adjacent differences in elevation, the sand paper 103 sands only the surface it contacts, regardless of the depth or height of such anomalies in the surface.